I happen to have a 13-year-old who is enjoying growing his own herb garden. Ryan’s not a member of 4-H, FFA or any of those other organizations which generally promote this type of behavior.

He simply has an herb garden. And loves it.

Ryan is quite proud of this garden and has begun bringing me fresh herbs to use in my cooking. The first delivery has occured and it was a couple containers, each holding big leaves of sage and basil respectively. Sage works quite well with both pork and stuffing so I decided those would be the big items of tonight’s dinner. For some sweetness, the pork loin would be covered in a good apple butter, specifically from Das Dutchman Essenhaus in Indiana. I finely-chopped a good handful of Ryan’s fresh sage, added it to the apple butter, and then coated the pork loin with it. I then cut some sweet onion, Red Delicious apples and a couple bulbs of kohlrabi into large chunks. These fuits and vegetables made a bed in the bottom of a roasting pan, and the pork loin went on top. These slow-roasted at 200 degrees F for 4.5 hours. As you can see in the above photo, I served it with some stuffing and steamed vegetable as well.